My dear [Miss] Addams,
If your journeyings in the next month or six weeks should bring you to Washington will you not let me know a few days, or even a few hours, in advance, and arrange to take dinner, or luncheon, or breakfast with us, or just give me what time you can spare?
An old friend of ours is planning to do something very [page 2] substantial for the work for peace, especially in the line of bringing the women of the world together in Europe "as soon as the flags of truce begin to fly" as he expresses it, and I am desperately anxious for us to be prepared to take intelligent advantage of his generosity. His ideas at present are rather nebulous, and he is asking my advice on questions that I feel myself absolutely incompetent to advise about, but that you would have at your tongue's end. He is very anxious to meet you and unfold his plan for your approval. It is not a Ford dream either in money or magnitude, but he is sincere and practical, and entirely able financially to promote what he undertakes.
I am not at liberty yet to tell you his name, but it will be a great help to us morally as well as financially as he is an old & distinguished soldier, and that is one reason why he does not think it right to unfold his plan publicly before the war is over, but he believes [page 3] in "preparedness" for that event.
I do hope you have had some real rest, and are feeling better than when you were in Philadelphia.
With most sincere regards, and hoping to see you soon
Very faithfully yours,
Ellen Maury Slayden.
P.S.
We are hearing very little more of the campaign of the churches for "[focusing] attention upon the right settlement of the war in the interest of permanent peace," and among some international lawyers & peace people that I had a talk with last week I found an increasing suspicion that it was only another scheme of the Public Information Bureau and the League to Enforce Peace to utilize the money of the Church Peace Union for a new form of Wilson propaganda.
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